We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.

— Gwendolyn Brooks.

This Gwendolyn Brooks quote has gripped my imagination over the last few days. As a licensed massage therapist, I've grown to have deep respect for the intricacies and wonders of the human form. The body continues to amaze and confound me. And as anyone who's taken the journey toward reverencing it can probably attest, you learn a couple of life lessons when you give yourself over to the study of anatomy:

1.) Beneath categories and labels of gender, race, socioeconomics, and sexuality, the functional anatomy of human beings is pretty much the same - hearts beating, lungs breathing, minds processing, bones structuring, muscles moving - a host of integrated and complex systems keeping every single one of us alive. This idea is profoundly more than simple cliché: We are not so different from one another, underneath it all. That's fact.

2.) Body systems are inextricably linked to one another. An illness or injury to one part of the body impacts the whole. And although modern Western medicine sometimes compartmentalizes illness, the reality of our well-being is wound up together in nuanced holistic connection - body, mind, and spirit all participating, all involved, whether we acknowledge it or not. That's fact.

Similarly, we - all together on this planet - belong to one another. Whether we feel like it or not, we are entirely in community. We are connected. And although we may not immediately feel or recognize it, when one part of our human family suffers or is disenfranchised, it damages the health and prosperity of us all. Practical inclusion is the only healthy way forward.

How that happens is up to us. Whether it happens is also up to us. But any way you slice it, "We are each other's magnitude and bond." That's not a matter of opinion. That's fact.